Austereo sows seeds for podcasts

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Spurred by a US trend showing younger listeners are being lured
from radio by portable music players such as iPod, Austereo has
admitted it has been running "podcasting" trials this month.

On Tuesday the radio broadcaster went public with its podcasting
service, offering its website visitors 20 to 25-minute "best of"
content packages that can be downloaded once a week for listening
on digital audio players.

Within three weeks it will produce daily podcasts of segments on
Triple M and 2Day FM.

Austereo is also close to launching its own music downloading
service, and this week also unveiled a "Hot 30 Countdown" mobile
ring-tone service.

Head of new media strategy Mark Neely said the move was
pre-emptive.

He said Austereo planned to "seed" the market with the idea that
radio podcasts were another listening option for portable media
players.

Triple J began podcasting some of its shows earlier this year
and other stations are looking at similar ideas.